Yesterday at Samsung Unpacked 2024, actress Sydney Sweeney was shown an AI-generated image of herself and fans think she wasn’t best impressed. Sweeney was no doubt being paid mega bucks to attend the event and she appeared during a segment about the company’s new Galaxy AI “Sketch to Image” feature. Sydney Sweeney’s reaction to Samsung showcasing an AI generated image based on her portrait pic.twitter.com/VKNK6tmfNU — non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) July 10, 2024 The feature allows Galaxy AI users to make a sketch doodle and the program will dramatically improve it into something much more fleshed out. The feature can also take an existing photo and “reimagine” it into something else. This is where Sweeney comes in.
“We’ve used your portrait to generate a 3D image,” says the host of the event as an AI representation of Sweeney appears on-screen. Despite the actress saying she “loves it”, many people online pointed out that the picture looks “absolutely nothing like her” and suggested Sweeney wasn’t impressed with it either. “We used a photograph to reproduce a photograph but worse,” writes one person on Instagram. The most awkward interaction of the decade goes to this!” Says Gururaj Youraj Sawant on X (formerly Twitter). That’s an uncomfortable spot to be put on😭 pic.twitter.com/Kw0auAjNFT — eri˚❀*·ꕤ. (@eternalcumslime) July 10, 2024
Fans speculated that Sweeney’s reaction “wasn’t genuine”. Of course, it’s impossible to know what Sweeney really thought of the image but some actors worry about AI replacing them — just like photographers. The actors union was on strike last year with AI high among the list of concerns. The Galaxy AI Sketch to Image feature works a bit like Adobe Photoshop’s Generative Fill Tool, users can doodle on a photograph and the AI will generate an object that it thinks the user is trying to create. There was an example given at Unpacked showing a photo of the River Seine with a crude drawing of a boat on it. The AI then created a convincing image of a boat on the Seine. “Galaxy AI understands what you’re trying to draw and generates images in different styles for you to choose from,” Samsung says. Image credits: Samsung
